IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ira/wpaper/202310.html

"Income inequality and redistribution in Scandinavian countries"

Author

Listed:
  • Petar Soric

    (Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb.)

  • Oscar Claveira

    (AQR-IREA Research Group. Departament d Econometria, Estad stica i Economia Aplicada. Universitat de Barcelona. Av. Diagonal, 690. 08034 Barcelona. Spain.)

Abstract

This paper investigates the adjustment of government redistributive policies in Scandinavian countries following changes in income inequality over the period 1980-2021. We use two complementary measures of inequality: the share of total income accruing to top percentile income holders, as well as the ratio of the share of total income accruing to top decile income holders divided by that accumulated by the bottom 50%. We find that the sign of the relationship between inequality and redistribution is mostly positive and time-varying. We also find significant evidence that redistributive measures in the form of taxes and government transfers adjust more rapidly in an upward than a downward direction, with the exception of Norway. We obtain a significant long-run relationship between both variables in Iceland and Sweden, while in Norway it just holds for the short run.

Suggested Citation

  • Petar Soric & Oscar Claveira, 2023. ""Income inequality and redistribution in Scandinavian countries"," IREA Working Papers 202310, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Oct 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:202310
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ub.edu/irea/working_papers/2023/202310.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kohlscheen, Emanuel & Lombardi, Marco & Zakrajšek, Egon, 2021. "Income Inequality and the depth of economic downturns," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    2. Hannu Tanninen, 1999. "Income inequality, government expenditures and growth," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(9), pages 1109-1117.
    3. Jurgen A. Doornik & Henrik Hansen, 2008. "An Omnibus Test for Univariate and Multivariate Normality," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(s1), pages 927-939, December.
    4. P. J. Dawson, 1997. "On testing Kuznets' economic growth hypothesis," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(7), pages 409-410.
    5. Oscar Claveria & Petar Sorić, 2023. "Labour market uncertainty after the irruption of COVID-19," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1897-1945, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. L. Marattin & P. Paesani & S. Salotti, 2011. "Fiscal shocks, public debt, and long-term interest rate dynamics," Working Papers wp740, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    2. Eckhard Hein & Christian Schoder, 2011. "Interest rates, distribution and capital accumulation -- A post-Kaleckian perspective on the US and Germany," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 693-723, November.
    3. Keblowski, Piotr & Welfe, Aleksander, 2010. "Estimation of the equilibrium exchange rate: The CHEER approach," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1385-1397, November.
    4. Sebastian Doerr & Thomas Drechsel & Donggyu Lee, 2021. "Income inequality, financial intermediation, and small firms," BIS Working Papers 944, Bank for International Settlements.
    5. Zelda Okatch & Abu Siddique & Anu Rammohan, 2013. "Determinants of Income Inequality in Botswana," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 13-15, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    6. Luigi Ermini & David F. Hendry, 2008. "Log Income vs. Linear Income: An Application of the Encompassing Principle," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(s1), pages 807-827, December.
    7. Wang, Lu & Ma, Feng & Niu, Tianjiao & Liang, Chao, 2021. "The importance of extreme shock: Examining the effect of investor sentiment on the crude oil futures market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    8. Rossi, Barbara & Sekhposyan, Tatevik, 2014. "Evaluating predictive densities of US output growth and inflation in a large macroeconomic data set," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 662-682.
    9. Glawe, Linda & Wagner, Helmut, 2017. "The Deep Determinants at More Subtle Stages of Development: The Example of the Middle-Income Trap Phenomenon," CEAMeS Discussion Paper Series 11/2017, University of Hagen, Center for East Asia Macro-economic Studies (CEAMeS), revised 2017.
    10. Ana Mar�a Iregui & Luis Fernando Melo & Mar�a Teresa Ram�rez, 2006. "Productividad Regional Y Sectorial En Colombia:An�Lisis Utilizando Datos De Panel," Borradores de Economia 3387, Banco de la Republica.
    11. Hernán Rincón, 1999. "Testing the Short-Long-Run Exchange Rate Effects on Trade Balance: The Case of Colombia," Borradores de Economia 120, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    12. Asongu Simplice & Andrés Antonio, 2014. "Global trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies of business software piracy: benchmarking IPRs harmonization," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 14/011, African Governance and Development Institute..
    13. Chen, Rongda & Xu, Jianjun, 2019. "Forecasting volatility and correlation between oil and gold prices using a novel multivariate GAS model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 379-391.
    14. Sebastian I. Burduja & Rodica Milena Zaharia, 2019. "Romanian Business Leaders’ Perceptions of Business-to-Business Corruption: Leading More Responsible Businesses?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-27, October.
    15. Narain Sinha, 2005. "Growth, Inequality and Structural Adjustment: An Empirical Interpretation of the S-Curve for the Indian Economy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Raghbendra Jha (ed.), Economic Growth, Economic Performance and Welfare in South Asia, chapter 18, pages 369-383, Palgrave Macmillan.
    16. Maximilian Schroder, 2024. "Mixing it up: Inflation at risk," Papers 2405.17237, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    17. Jair N. Ojeda-Joya & Oscar Jaulin-Mendez & Juan C. Bustos-Peláez, 2019. "The Interdependence Between Commodity-Price and GDP Cycles: A Frequency-Domain Approach," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 47(3), pages 275-292, September.
    18. Jennifer Castle & David Hendry, 2010. "Automatic Selection for Non-linear Models," Economics Series Working Papers 473, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Cristiano Perugini & Gaetano Martino, 2008. "Income Inequality Within European Regions: Determinants And Effects On Growth," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(3), pages 373-406, September.
    20. Simplice Asongu & Oasis Kodila-Tedika, 2015. "On the Empirics of Institutions and Quality of Growth: Evidence for Developing Countries," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 15/041, African Governance and Development Institute..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:202310. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alicia García (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feubaes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.